# Recommended reading

michael reece (sick@lab.com)
Wed, 2 Oct 1996 15:35:41 PDT

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    funny how MUDs and mental hospitals are so similar.

    i propose we change .wizard to .quack in future versions.

    At 02:28 PM 10/2/96 PDT, Zachary DeAquila wrote:
    >
    >A friend forwarded me this:
    >
    >------- Forwarded Message
    >
    >Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 10:41:49 -0700 (PDT)
    >From: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu>
    >To: Red Rock Eater List <rre@weber.ucsd.edu>
    >
    >[...]
    >
    >People who run MUD's keep telling me variants of the same story, whose
    >upshot is that some user starts behaving in extremely divisive ways and
    >starts turning the whole place inside out. One typical pattern is for this
    >user to do something outrageous, provoke a strict response, scream about
    >injustice, and polarize the community between lovers of order who hate
    >the user and lovers of fairness who hate the administration. Another
    >typical pattern is people who wait until the last minute of a group
    >decision-making process to raise fundamental objections, carrying on about
    >dictatorship unless everyone starts the whole process over again from
    >scratch. Such people give genuine crusaders for justice a bad name, of
    >course, and they also cause immense and mysterious upset. Everybody who
    >operates a MUD should read R.D. Hinshelwood's book "What Happens in
    >Groups:  Psychoanalysis, the Individual and the Community", London: Free
    >Association Books, 1987. It is a detailed account of exactly this sort of
    >behavior.  It's set in mental hospitals, of course, as opposed to MUD's,
    >but the principles are the same.
    >
    >
    >------- End of Forwarded Message
    >
    >
    >
    ---
    michael reece             deprogrammer                 huskylabs, inc.
    sick@lab.com     http://www.butterfly.net/sick/    http://www.lab.com/
    in case of emergency, break glass. or page 1-800-skypage, pin 4197381.